Distracted Deep Work Is A Waste Of Time | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | The first one comes from The Alchemist, who asks, "If one is doing deep work and gets

00:00:06.120 | distracted, does that transmogrify the work into shallow work?"

00:00:14.240 | Alright, well first of all, I appreciate the Calvin and Hobbes reference with transmogrify,

00:00:20.360 | from scientific progress goes boink from that collection.

00:00:24.720 | Calvin builds the transmogrifier, which can transform you from one creature to another,

00:00:30.760 | so there's a good Bill Watterson shout out.

00:00:32.920 | This is a good question, it's a technical question, let's do it quick, but I think it's

00:00:35.880 | important.

00:00:37.160 | So in the ontology of knowledge-work focus, we have deep work and shallow work and deep

00:00:43.320 | work, you know I wrote the book about it, it's where you're focused without distraction

00:00:48.600 | on cognitively demanding work and shallow work.

00:00:51.040 | I often just casually define as everything else.

00:00:55.280 | So the question is, if you don't meet all of the standards of deep work, is what you're

00:01:00.040 | left with shallow work?

00:01:01.860 | And actually, if we're going to be technical about this, not really.

00:01:05.600 | So let me be a little bit more specific here.

00:01:10.000 | So shallow work is efforts that do not directly move the needle, so it's not the effort that

00:01:17.280 | is directly creating the value on which your company or job relies.

00:01:23.320 | It's important, if you don't do shallow work, your company can't exist, you can't keep your

00:01:28.800 | job.

00:01:29.920 | But on the other hand, if all you did was shallow work, your company wouldn't exist

00:01:33.640 | and you can't keep your job, right?

00:01:35.160 | So if you're the computer programmer, the actual effort that creates value for your

00:01:41.000 | company is code, producing code that becomes a product they can sell.

00:01:47.680 | Shallow work, like going to the marketing meetings, etc.

00:01:50.720 | You need to do it, you need to understand what's going on, but if all you did was that

00:01:53.480 | shallow work, no code got produced, eventually the company goes out of business.

00:01:58.280 | Deep work is a little bit more complicated because instead of just being a what, it's

00:02:03.120 | also a how.

00:02:04.580 | So deep work, we have to care about the content.

00:02:08.440 | So deep work needs to be focused on something that actually moves the needle, it's cognitively

00:02:12.080 | demanding, it produces new value, it's the core activities that matter in your professional

00:02:16.200 | life.

00:02:17.200 | But the how matters as well.

00:02:18.760 | To really qualify as deep work, it has to be executed without distraction, which means

00:02:23.880 | you're not context shifting.

00:02:26.660 | No quick checking of your email, no quick checking of your phone, all you're doing is

00:02:30.400 | focusing on that task.

00:02:32.360 | You need the how and the what together for it to count as deep work.

00:02:35.060 | So the way I see this question is what happens if you keep the what, you're focusing on something

00:02:39.020 | important, you're writing computer code, but you get rid of the how.

00:02:42.400 | So instead of doing that without distraction, you're kind of looking at your phone, you

00:02:45.440 | have slack going.

00:02:46.520 | Well, really what you end up with there is something that's not deep work and it's not

00:02:49.560 | shallow work.

00:02:50.960 | The activity that you're doing is cognitively demanding and important, but the way you're

00:02:54.000 | doing it is not up to the full standard of what your mind is capable of.

00:02:58.200 | So I don't actually have a term for that.

00:03:00.160 | I mean, it essentially throws you into a productivity purgatory.

00:03:04.480 | Maybe we could call it pseudo deep work or failed deep work.

00:03:08.120 | And it's not where you want to be.

00:03:10.120 | As long as you're working on an activity that's really important, you want to do it in the

00:03:13.600 | way that's going to get the most value out of the time you spend, and that is to do it

00:03:17.220 | without distraction.

00:03:19.840 | So we really should have three things here, shallow work, deep work, and pseudo deep work.

00:03:26.240 | Shallow work is necessary, but not sufficient to be very successful.

00:03:29.360 | It's important logistical things, but it's not the stuff that moves the needle.

00:03:32.920 | Deep work is it all coming together and you're working on what matters and you're doing it

00:03:36.320 | in a way that allows you to do it at a high level.

00:03:38.360 | In between is pseudo deep work.

00:03:39.860 | You're working on something important, but not doing it that well.

00:03:43.920 | You're context shifting, so your ability to focus is reduced and the quality of what you

00:03:47.360 | produce is downgraded.

00:03:51.320 | So I guess we need a new word.

00:03:53.460 | So let's go with, we'll go with pseudo deep work for now.

00:03:56.880 | So that's a good clarification.

00:03:57.880 | Yeah, that's definitely been a complexity that's entered my discussions of deep work

00:04:05.680 | is it's the how and the what.

00:04:09.320 | And you got to get both of those things for it to really, really to count.

00:04:12.640 | So in a way, pseudo might be a little bit too positive of an adjective for it because

00:04:18.520 | it's kind of distracted work, right?

00:04:21.880 | Yeah.

00:04:22.880 | Like so failed deep work, depreciated deep work.

00:04:26.440 | Yeah, something like that.

00:04:27.440 | Yeah.

00:04:28.440 | Degraded deep work.

00:04:29.440 | Yeah.

00:04:30.440 | You don't really want to be there.

00:04:31.440 | Yeah.

00:04:32.440 | Why?

00:04:33.440 | But I mean, as long as you're spending the time to work on something important, you probably

00:04:35.520 | want to get as much as possible out of that time.

00:04:38.920 | Yeah.

00:04:39.920 | I'm with you on that.

00:04:40.080 | [MUSIC]

Distracted Deep Work Is A Waste Of Time | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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